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11/12/2012

Should we threat the exit polls on how Hispanics voted with skepticism?

Exit polls show that Obama got 71 percent of the Hispanic vote. But there is a big potential problem with that claim. Namely a very conservative state with a Republican Hispanic running for the US Senate not being included in the exit polling.

Let me give you an example of the problem here. The 19 states that were left out of the exit polling were states that tended to very strong Republican states, not just Texas. One of the questions included in these exit polls every eight years is whether people own guns (1988, 1996, 2004 and now it should have been in there for 2012). If you tend to leave out heavily Republican states, do you think that it might bias you poll on the rate that people own guns? Sure, Democrats do own guns, but at a lower rate than Republicans and where Democrats own guns at the highest rates tend to be in heavily Republican states.